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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating effects of selling experience on the relationship between job satisfaction and sales performance, customer orientation and sales performance, and adaptive selling behaviors and sales performance, taking the context of B2B insurance selling.

Using a sample of 380 business‐to‐business insurance salespersons from an emerging market (India) to validate their model, the authors tested several hypotheses using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The results suggest that experience works with customer‐oriented selling in making the more experienced salespersons better performers. It was also found that for less experienced salespersons, the impact of job satisfaction on performance is weaker than for more experienced salespersons. In addition, it was found that more experienced salespersons' performance is better explained using job satisfaction and customer‐oriented selling rather than their adaptive selling behaviors.

The study contributes by explaining the mechanism for the above relationships. The study also contributes to knowledge by showing that more experience may not be always good for sales performance. Since the sample comes from an emerging market, the paper extends the knowledge from developed markets, and by testing in emerging markets.

The managerial implications of this study lie in explaining those situations where experience can make salespersons more productive. The current sales literature on B2B selling contexts falls short of explaining this mechanism in salesperson performance.

This study contributes to knowledge uniquely by extending the body of empirical evidence that suggests that for experience, more is not always better. The study also shows that a more experienced salesperson does not improve his/her performance by adopting adaptive selling strategies. Such adaptive selling strategies are probably more suitable for younger salespersons, given different expectations from them by customers. For experienced salespersons, job satisfaction and customer‐oriented selling are more important than adaptive selling. This study explains the mechanism for the above relationships.

The purpose of this study is to examine how trends in historical data influence two types of predictive judgments: territory selection and salesperson hiring. Sales managers are confronted frequently with decisions that explicitly or implicitly involve forecasting with limited information. In doing so, they conceptualize how the magnitude of these trend effects may be affected by the experience managers have in making these types of judgments. Study 1 provides evidence of a curvilinear relationship between experience and reliance on the trend data whereby the sales territory selections of novice sales managers exhibited greater susceptibility to informational trends than did the evaluations of naïve and expert decision-makers. A benchmark analysis in Study 2 further revealed that the salesperson selections made by novice and expert sales managers were equally biased, albeit in opposite directions, with novices overweighting and experts underweighting historical performance trends. Implications of these findings are discussed, as are avenues for future research.

The authors employ an online experimental design methodology of practicing managers. For Study 1, they use regression, whereas Study 2 uses a deterministic process to develop a priori predictive benchmark forecasts. Ordinary least squares is then used to estimate manager’s decisions, which are then compared to the predictive forecasts to determine accuracy.

Study 1 provides evidence of a curvilinear relationship between experience and reliance on the trend data whereby the sales territory selections of novice sales managers exhibited greater susceptibility to informational trends than did the evaluations of naïve and expert decision-makers. A benchmark analysis in Study 2 further revealed that the salesperson selections made by novice and expert sales managers were equally biased, albeit in opposite directions, with novices overweighting and experts underweighting historical performance trends.

The present inquiry is the first to provide insights into an important issue that has been the subject of equivocal findings, namely, whether experience in a judgmental domain exerts a facilitating or debilitating effect on sales manager decision-making. In this regard, some research supports the intuition that experience in making a particular type of decision can insulate managers from judgmental bias and, in doing so, improve decision quality (see Shanteau, [1992a] for a summary). In contrast, other work provides a more pessimistic view by demonstrating that the quality of decision-making is either unaffected by or can erode with additional experience (Hutchinson et al., 2010). To help reconcile these conflicting findings, the authors presented and tested a theoretical framework conceptualizing how trends may influence predictive judgments across three levels of decision-maker experience.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the moderating role of industrial experience in the relationship between different facets of a sales person's satisfaction with the job and his/her intention to quit the job.

The paper is based on the data collected from sales persons from a pharmaceutical company in India. Dimensions of job satisfaction have been specifically developed for this study due to the cultural specificity of the context. The job satisfaction scale was developed through a process of qualitative research.

The paper finds that industry experience moderates the job satisfaction, disinclination to quit relationship for most of the job satisfaction dimensions. Specifically it is seen than Industry experience has a moderating effect when the effect of a salesperson's satisfaction with the organizational HR policies, supervisor satisfaction, compensation policies and career development and disinclination to quit, are considered.

The paper contributes to the existing literature by considering the moderating effect of Industry experience, a variable hitherto not considered in sales management literature. This extends knowledge on the factors that affect a sales person's disinclination to quit – an extremely important factor in sales force management

While this paper extends the already existing knowledge about the moderating variables that affect the relationship between job satisfaction and intention to quit, its original contribution is in terms of the setting – India, as well as the identification of a moderating variable‐industry experience.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the workplace experiences of current and former underrepresented ticket sales employees.

The study utilized survey methodology to answer the research questions. Purposive sampling was used to identify potential respondents: individuals who were either currently employed as sport ticket sales employees or had been previously. The researchers examined online media guides from North American major league sports teams and identified ticket sales representatives who were compiled into a database and then cross-referenced through social media platform LinkedIn. Individuals were located via LinkedIn profiles and sent an anonymous, electronic survey which included a combination of Likert scale and open-ended questions regarding respondent experiences working in ticket sales departments.

Survey responses from 511 ticket salespeople revealed negative experiences related to management and career advancement opportunities, as well as significant differences in negative experiences for underrepresented populations regarding mentorship and culture.

Sport sales managers desire to expand employee diversity (Wells et al., 2019) and improve overall retention rates, but if a clear understanding of organizational vision toward diversification is not established within sports teams, managers are less likely to embrace diversity initiatives. Thus, it is imperative to understand the lived experiences of underrepresented ticket salespeople in order to improve workplace culture and effectiveness.

The primary focus of this project is to see if emotional intelligence and awareness training should be introduced into sales training programs and to see if emotional intelligence training is necessary for success in the sales profession. A recent survey of 515 professional sales representatives located in Pittsburgh, PA area firms that were chosen based on relatively large size and established reputations in the area were asked to respond to a number of questions concerning sales training and related sales experience. Factor analysis results with industry type, insurance and financial type, as an example discovered four categories of data reduction: component 1 related to emotional intelligence (identifying personality types, presentation skills, controlling one's emotions, and adaptability to change) variables, component 2 was associated with experience (years of managerial experience and years of sales experience), component 3 for people skills (sales concepts and procedures and listening skills), and component 4 dealt with technical skills (writing skills and computer competencies). Not surprisingly, communication skills, negotiating skills, emotional intelligence, and presentation skills, and the need to differentiate personality types were found to be very important to the sales practitioners. Equally not surprising that they found their professional stressful and the relevance of college course in sales with somewhat mixed reviews.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the cognitive appraisals, coping choices and behavioral responses by business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals confronting the acutely stressful experience of losing a customer, and their pursuit of justice in the win-back process, influences reacquisition outcomes. The paper further examines the role of sales experience as a moderator between coping choices and successful win back.

In all, 98 critical incidents were reported by sales professionals from B2B firms across various industries. NVivo 9, content analysis and logistic regression were used to analyze the data.

The results show that problem-focused coping (PFC) and pro-active responses positively affect win-back outcome. By contrast, emotion-focused coping (EFC) and re-active responses have a negative association with customer reacquisition. The findings also show that sales experience moderates the relationship between levels of EFC and win-back outcomes. Specifically, for sales professionals with low levels of EFC, sales experience helps improve chances of winning back lost customers. But for sales professionals using higher levels of EFC, more sales experience decreases win-back probability. Additionally, the findings show that procedural, interactional and distributive justice all contribute to successful customer reacquisition.

The few published studies of how B2B sales professionals deal with customer defections reveal a mixture of bereavement and drivenness in striving for new accounts. The authors’ focus and findings on the use of PFC and EFC strategies, justice mechanisms and the uneven role of experience in responding to this stressful context suggests that there is much to be gained from additional research. Specifically, probes into how sales professionals may be inadvertently skewed to EFC behaviors by either overly simplistic training systems, learning- versus performance-based incentives or their experience with prior customer defections.

The findings highlight the importance of PFC strategies and the delivery of procedural, interactional and distributive justice strategies to productively adapt to customer defections, activate switch back behavior and win back lost customers. Sales force training systems need to address the increased churning in B2B markets and integrate win-back procedures in sales training programs so that sales professionals do not default to EFC and/or strive for new accounts when facing the stress of customer defection.

The findings contribute to customer defection management and sales literature by integrating coping and justice theories in exploring sales professionals’ cognitive appraisals and coping responses to the acute stress of losing a current customer.

This study seeks to address the issue of managing buyer‐seller relationships. Specifically, a framework incorporating the constructs of information communication, sales technology, product knowledge, and customer satisfaction is proposed.

Empirical support was derived from salesperson survey data combined with customer‐reported satisfaction ratings. All 254 sales representatives of the women's health care division of a pharmaceutical company were surveyed for this research study.

The results suggest that managers can benefit by extending salesforce training to address not only technical knowledge but also communication skills. Providing technology with the potential to increase customer satisfaction through improved information communication would be beneficial as well.

The research suggests that managers should invest resources not only in providing salespeople with technical knowledge, but also in training them in effective communication skills. Further, the benefit has been shown, in terms of customer satisfaction, of providing technology to support communication between salespeople and customers.

The study uses the relationship marketing approach to explore the critical role of information communication construct in a buyer‐seller exchange process. Moreover, the inclusion of salesperson experience as a possible moderator of the links to this construct brings additional value.

This study aims to investigate moderators affecting the impact of salesperson acquisition-retention (AR) ambidexterity on sales performance based on the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework.

The authors collected triadic data through 391 questionnaires from salespeople, 50 questionnaires from sales managers and archival data about each salesperson’s performance. Hierarchical linear modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that salesperson AR ambidexterity positively affects sales performance. The positive effect is strengthened by capability control but weakened by outcome control and activity control. The authors also find that sales experience and market attractiveness hurt the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity.

First, this study does not examine the mediating mechanism underlying the effect of salesperson AR ambidexterity. Second, sales-service ambidexterity is another ambidextrous variable for salespeople. Future research can consider AR and sales-service ambidexterity together.

First, managers should be cautious when encouraging experienced salespeople to conduct AR ambidexterity. Second, managers need to use capability control to motivate salespeople with AR ambidextrous behaviors. Third, AR ambidexterity could be not required in a market with many opportunities.

Although some studies have examined the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity, they reveal inconsistent findings, which suggest contingent conditions on the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity. However, the attention on the contingent conditions is limited. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the contingent conditions from the MOA framework. The findings provide some insights into when salesperson AR ambidexterity is effective.

One of the primary characteristics of the sales environment of the next century will be the proliferation of technology as an important component of the sales process. The successful salesperson of the future will be marked by an ability to incorporate and directly apply a wide range of technology in their interactions with customers. More than simple data access, sales technology is increasingly being used as a means by which the salesperson and customer interact. The overall objective of this study is to measure the attitude of salespeople toward the use of computer technology in a sales job and then ascertain the relationship between these attitudes and a salesperson’s job experience and productivity. The results of the study outline important managerial implications related to introducing and implementing new technology uses within a salesforce.

The authors investigated the moderating effect of sales experience on the relationship between salespeople’s procedural knowledge and their performance, using a sample of 108 salespeople working at three car dealerships in Japan. Moderated regression analyses suggested that the more experience salespeople gain, the stronger the relationship between procedural knowledge and performance becomes. The results provide some support for the hypothesis that the sales experience moderates the relationship between procedural knowledge and performance, which is consistent with Anderson’s (1982, 1983) model and the ten‐year rule of necessary preparation in expertise research. The results also suggest that a high‐performing sales expert has customer‐oriented and active selling knowledge. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings in managing salespeople are discussed.